


High Tide

by kios



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet as HECK, Canon Divergence, Elios parents are so lovely olivers not so much, Eventual Smut, Flashbacks, Heavily inspired by "An Immigrant" By Jon Bellion, I won't give you spoilers as to weather this ends happily or not cause its all on the table rn, M/M, breakdowns, conflictions, lovey dovey stuff, some homophobic slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 06:22:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13518372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kios/pseuds/kios
Summary: "Every low tide comes another high tide, because though the Earth told the Ocean to run away, it couldn't bare but to come back just to graze the shoreline's lips once more."This fic follows Elio and Oliver in the short months after Oliver leaves starting not even 24 hours later, and the emotional toll that effects them both emmensly, and the choices Oliver must make to either live his life on his own terms, or have it taken by others. There will be major angst, many flashbacks, and this is mostly canon divergence in which I imagine their first months apart and what Oliver deals with at home knowing that he is being pushed to marry a woman he doesn't love.This will be a multichapter fic.





	High Tide

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this, i appreciate it to the end of the earth. 
> 
> Yes!! I gave Oliver a last name!  
> Also i'll have an update schedule posted soon for all those interested.
> 
> Please message me if there are any errors!

PROLOGUE

The first thing I notice accutley when I step down the plane steps is the harsh crispness to the air. Of course, that's not to say the air in Crema wasn't chilly; it had its scattered morning where you'd feel a twinge of ice creep onto your arms as you walked through to the backyard in bare feet. Goosebumps would crawl up my neck as the dew caught my eye and I’d sit on wet grass, waiting for the sun's heat to pull me under. Harsh wasn't the word to use at the time; the setting radiated a certain comfort only formed through the idea that this world, as short lived and tourist crammed as it could possibly become, was that of thin borders that had land that took hours to explore. It was mine, and nobody could enter but those I chose too. I firmly believe I cherished every moment there and still the fear weeps within me that I took it for granted.

I'd call myself foolish for such a thought if it weren't for the six hours I've just spent with a cranky old man in a button down shirt a size to small for him sitting inches away from me. He slept the moment we left the runway and snored obnoxiously for the duration of the flight. When I say that New York's air is harsh, well.

I mean it.

My ears pop as I walk through the arrival terminal within La Guardia and I rub my eyes. I feel dry all over from the plane's stale air when just hours ago it seems I slept in a room so lush and full of life- white, so antique you knew instantly it was nourished and thoroughly loved by the lives that occupied it before my time, and loved by a boy who's books occupied its shelves and called it a summer comfort space. Sheets were soft and washed with such care it was almost as if Mafalda had feather hands, weaving a scent of vanilla and orchid through every stitch, allowing it to engulf you in a soft dream in a summer night's heat.

People are everywhere, and I guess in a way Italy wasn't so different. I'm unsure if it's the time of year and the lemon wired buzz that caused the nightlife to be so welcoming and carefree for the time I called myself a visitor, but I just know that since I arrived back into the country I call familiar i've felt the change in atmosphere: the people certainly still are buzzed. Buzzed and buzzed, stressed and buzzed. Clopping high heels and deep smoke rattled voices ring through the airport, some yelling obscenities and some pulling traveling kids by their arms to run to the gate before they fall tardy. It's similar but so insanely different. I guess you'd have to experience it to understand.

I've almost finished my time here, and good on that- my bags have been claimed and I'm heading out the door to face the humid city air-

Who was that?

I whip my head around as my eye catches the sight of a lanky boy with brown curly hair, wandering rather aimlessly to find his departure line. 

He's got the same coat, almost. His hair is longer. No mole on his face from what i can see, the one that lets you know it's truly him. It'll never be truly him, rather a duplicate from another time, another place. 

Elio is from the past, and it seems as though he transcends all of which time conceals. He is not here right now, but I continue to see him. It's terrible and haunting and beautiful.

Haunting and beautiful: to picture it, blue light radiates from the moon mixed with dark sky, shadowing the half of his face I can see. I can't quite pick out every feature of his face, not now, but I could pick out the lax smirk in the shape of his jaw, his slowly blinking eyes. It smells like grass and wind- wind had a smell there. sharp on the tip of your nose, cool smelling and fresh. It flowed through the tree that stood behind us as we sat on the lower gazebo railing with our legs intertwined. 

When he leaned into kiss me, I wouldn't have had to see him to know him. He was dainty in his movements for someone so eager. He tasted of curiosity. My lips to him were knew ground, and he cherished them as if he had always known them. I appreciated that most about him. He jumped right in and was never once judgemental.

The united states were too judgmental for a heart such as his, and maybe even mine, if I could one day be like him. 

But I'm from the United States. Whatever lives here lives in me. And he, however, is not.

* * * * * * * * * *

 

"Elio?"

Pause.

"...Elio..."

I wipe my wet face into the pillow, painting my face with the idea of sleepiness over sadness for the sake of my mother, who i've learned is some all knowing being with eyes in the back of her head and at the palms of her hands. I pretend I didn't hear her the first time, but she knows.

I grunt and turn over in my bed, beckoning her in. "Yeah?" I wipe my eyes with the heel of my hand. She steps in and studies me, softly, carefully.

"You missed breakfast..."

I turn on my elbows to look out the window as if the light seeping through waks a surprise. It wasn't. I'd been looking through the same glass panes for hours now and according to the clock near the ceiling, since four o'clock in the morning. I had woken up with an upset stomach. It was one of the ones you get when something dreadful is pressing at you but you can't do anything about it until the sun has risen and you could move around again, but in my mind, that sun would not rise, never rise, because Oliver simply would never be back. You can force the run to rise only as much as you can force someone to stay.

"I'm sorry, I guess I slept in. I was up late last night reading. That new book you bought me is great." I scratch the back of my neck gingerly.

She smiles a little at that, but she knows better than to buy it. I guess she doesn't want to make my mood ever the more sour by talking about the whole Oliver situation so she wraps a hand around my door frame and lingers there a moment, eyes grazing over my posters and my bookshelf.

"We have a visitor today."

"Today?" I ask, chuckling hesitantly. It was so late in the summer, who could possibly be visiting now?

"Your father's best friend from high school, actually. Davide? You've met him before but you were very young, I doubt you'll know him by seeing him. He received his vacation leave late this year so he thought it'd be the perfect time to come drop by seeing as it's just us now. He lives in Austria now, he must be taking a roadtrip." 

Part of me doesn't believe I'll make it through that meeting, and I'll retreat to the pool in time to sit with my legs crossed at the bottom of it to think. I'll come up for air for a few minutes, and go back down again because the first thought hadn't yet finished. My hair will become frizzy afterwards and my fingers will prune from the prolonged exposure to the water, but that's all okay for now. I'll yell if I must, and nobody will have the misfortune of hearing me. It'll be great.

I sigh, and smile softly to calm her nerves. 

“I’ll be down in a few moments.”

I spend the next 20 minutes sat on the edge of my bed, thinking about the only few words that resonated with me in that entire interaction.

It’s just us now. I’m just me now. For most people that’s okay, but being me has changed in meaning in the past 24 hours. 

I’m not sure if I like it anymore.

* * * * * * * * * *

 

“Is this the American?”

“Oliver Bishop. An impeccable young man indeed.”

My father and a stout, balding man in front of me who calls himself Davide, sit across the table fawning over a picture of Oliver. Once it’s laid down on the table I can see it’s a simple photo of him on one of his first days here. He towers over my father in the polaroid and you can see that his hair is mussed up from the wind that blew overhead that day. His chest is visible in the stark green button down he wears, and you can tell he’s lost in conversation with my father. Over what, I fail to remember.

Davide sucks on his cigarette. “When did he leave?”

“Not even a day ago. It’s strange, you know. It’s like a ghost is living here now. Almost as if he is here as an entity but not entirely. This only happens with select guests.”

“It’ll happen to me when I leave, yeah?” They share a billowing laugh, and my father claps him on the shoulder. I look away.

“He looks like a true lady’s man, eh?”

“La muvi star, Annella would say. I do believe he was. He got along with everyone, i’ve never seen somebody so sociable that they found everybody tolerable. He’ll be a professor one day, mark my words. You need that kind of attitude to work with some students. He’s ahead of the game.”

The peculiar thing about it all is that he was a lady’s man. He did look like the type of guy who would charm a girl with just his eyes and the flash of a smile then take her by the hip and woo her into the rest of the dark night. I hated and loved him for it, because it was like a weird manipulative power had been granted to a man that was less than manipulative. He wasn’t fickle, no. But he made out that he was to cope with other things. 

Other things.

“Elio?” My father snaps me out of my daze.

“Is everything okay?”

My screams aren’t heard under the pool’s running water not 10 minutes later.


End file.
